How can I prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Question

During the era of the Soviet Union, Russia was a much scarier nation: The Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Space Race. No one can deny these were major events in Russia's history. Let's say that for some reason, I want to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, how can I do it?

What is the smallest change I can make to history to allow the continuation of the Soviet Union? There are only three constraints,

1. The change must be realistic, no mind control, no super weapon, etc.
2. The Soviet Union has to be able to remain a economic and military superpower through and including modern day
3. The change can occur no earlier than 1800

Answer 1

You need a real historian to make sure these are really feasible, but let me put some ideas out there. Most of these suggestions are variations on a theme, which is:

Let the Soviet Union take over Western Europe

Doing so adds a huge population, a huge industrial base and a huge educated population to the SU, and would give them a significant leg up in the Cold War. There are a number of ways you could do this:

Delay D-Day by a year.

This allows the SU the opportunity to capture much more of Europe than they did. having D-Day fail would have much the same effect.

Cancel the Marshall Plan

Europe was crippled in 1945. The Marshall Plan solidified Western Europe in the Western Allies camp. Having them ignore reconstruction, and have the Soviets step in instead. could easily have been enough to allow the Soviets to dominate Europe politically.

Communist Revolution in Europe

This wasn't as unlikely as we might think in the late forties. A substantial part of the population, with some justification, saw the Soviets as having born the brunt of opposing Hitler, and some thought of the war as being brought about by European leaders (who were also responsible for the Great Depression that had just ended). It would not have taken that much to have sparked a revolution. Cancelling the Marshall Plan would contribute to this.

Answer 2

Prevent the Sino-Soviet Split

China was a great ally for the USSR, with its large amount of people, place on the UN Security Council, and communist regime. If you prevent the ideological drift between Mao and Stalin, the two red giants stay together and support one another.

No split means no Sino-American Rapprochement, no trade with America. Instead, China trades with the USSR, and the USSR adopts China's economic strategy. Both countries are able to transition into what China is today without giving America the benefit of cheap Chinese factories.

Answer 3

Ultimately the demise of the Soviet Union can be attributed to economic failure. With enough treasure the collapse could have been averted.

This is solved most simply through the discovery of abundant natural resources, like huge deposits of easily-accessible oil (instead of deep shale-oil) in Siberia, maybe along with precious metals. Basically, commodities that reasonably could have existed but were hidden or difficult to detect.

The windfall might lead to an initial barrage of public and military spending, increasing the stability of the USSR and sweeping up the bloc countries in patriotic fervor.

Further investment in infrastructure and science might occur, leading to the early development of genetically-engineered wheat and corn that are resistant to the conditions of the arctic and sub-arctic tundra. This permanently solves their food shortages and prevents the need to import crops, making the USSR more economically independent.

A Soviet Renaissance occurs. Democratic western countries would want access to their cheap oil and Eastern Europeans especially would become envious of the rapidly increasing standard of living in the USSR, leading some to distance themselves from their western allies in favor of closer ties with the empire, resulting in NATO's influence and power diminishing somewhat.

Now, imagine a rapid industrialization occurs whereby the USSR diverts a lot of the manufacturing sector that was growing in China and begins producing well-made, reverse-engineered western products at cheaper, government-subsidized prices (ignoring NATO-aligned countries' intellectual property rights), which creates steady employment for its citizens and brings in huge cash flow from capitalist markets.

Eventually NATO would be dissolved, with most member countries resigning in order to gain access to the new Soviet commodities/markets and to protect their own IP. The cold war ends with communist influence expanding around the world and the Soviet Union growing stronger than ever. Eventually many smaller countries along their border will be willfully annexed and the empire will expand, creating prosperity as it goes.

Answer 4

Don't do what Gorbachov did.

All of his reforms were well intentional, but were probably responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. I suspect that a leader who was able to implement economic reforms without causing disruption and chaos could have left the Soviet Union a sound and prosperous nation.

China's controlled move to a free market economy was probably inspired in large part by the lessons provided by the failed reforms that lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Replay that success in the context of the SU in the 80s and I bet you'd get good results. The great thing about speculative fiction is that you get to prevent a disaster by retroactively applying the lessons provided by the disaster itself.

Answer 5

Kill or otherwise get rid of Joseph Stalin.

He pretty much hijacked the communist experiment from the start, shaping it to his own priorities.

It's hard to predict how it would have been without him, but it certainly would be very different, and presumably much better. Genocide is always a bad idea economically, whatever you think of ethics.

On the other hand, perhaps they would be far less scary.

Answer 6

If you read Soviet literature, e.g., science fiction from the decade following Stalin's death, it was full of hope. And it was genuine hope, not communist party propaganda. These hopes were eventually killed, suffocated perhaps is the better word, by the stagnation of the Brezhnev era.

Instead of the stagnation, allow economic reforms in the 1960s in both the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Allow Hungary to go through with its 1968 New Economic Mechanism unimpeded. Reintroduce and strengthen the reforms of Lenin's New Economic Policy and insist on the satellite states following suit. Allow private enterprise, foreign investment, market forces and the free flow of capital. Tear down the stupid Berlin wall (or better yet, don't build it in the first place); a good economic policy is a much better way to retain manpower. In short, do what China did under Deng, and what the Soviet Union dared not do under Brezhnev, for fear of losing direct and complete control over the economy of the totalitarian state.

With the human and economic resources available to the Soviet Union, it could have become an economic powerhouse by the 1980s, even as it maintained a one-party state and totalitarian control over the political sector. China's example shows as much. And the occasional political revolt could be put down with ease (see Tiananmen Square) when the people, by and large, are satisfied with your governance. The Prague Spring of 1968 might not even have happened. Solidarity would have been just a blip on the radar, if it even formed in the first place.

Oh, and don't let Reagan bait you with Star Wars into a spending contest that you are destined to lose. And, of course it goes without saying, don't get suckered into the Afghanistan adventure. Don't waste the space program's resources on a shuttle just for prestige, when it was glaringly obvious already that the universal, economical "Space Transportation System" was anything but. But you know what... even with these rather bad political mistakes, the Soviet Union could have remained intact and more powerful than ever, if its septuagenarian leadership only had the courage to allow its economy to flourish.

Answer 7

Delay or destroy the Manhattan project

Why did the USSR fail? They could not compete economically with the United States.

After WWII the US reduced the size of its military and grew economically, while the USSR kept its military large. Despite an initial military advantage, the USSR and the Warsaw pact could not attack NATO, initially because the US had nukes and Russia lacked them, and later because both sides had enough nukes to destroy each other in the event of war.

Behind this nuclear shield the US and NATO spent less on military initially and had large economic growth. They then had a larger economic base to compete in an arms race. The USSR had a weaker economy, couldn't scale up its military and collapsed under the economic reassure.

If nuclear weapons took several decades longer to develop, the USSR would have been able to force a confrontation much earlier when it had a military advantage. This would either force NATO to spend more on military and reduce their economic advantage or allow the USSR to take over or invade much of Europe, giving the USSR a large Economic base to compete from later.

Answer 8

This is the question Francis Spufford addresses in Red Plenty. To summarize, the Stalinist economic system, in which the second-most-powerful man in the Soviet Union ended up having to adjudicate disputes between two turnip farmers, was hopeless and inefficient. At the time, though, some theorists did propose a better solution, what we today call optimization by linear programming. There were two problems with it: there wasn’t enough computing power in the Soviet Union in the middle of last century to make it work, and it kept telling the central planners that the way to run an economy efficiently looked an awful lot like capitalism. For example, it kept calculating “shadow prices” that functioned a lot more like market prices (plus some Pigovian taxes and subsidies) than like the Marxist labor theory of value.

The example of successful economic reform of a Stalinist economy in the real world while keeping the Communist party in power is of course China under Deng Xiaoping.

If there’s an actual time machine involved, you can deliver blueprints for future technology. But, no matter what you do, you have to break the stranglehold of Stalinist ideology over the Soviet economy.

Answer 9

Don't ban cybernetics

There were attempts to build centralised controlling system that would optimize everything. However, for ideological/political reasons cybernetics were outlawed. With better computers (as a result of actual research in the field) and less political/ideological grip on science (you would need that one to save the field anyway) it would make economy actually work without market (although in many ways, good and bad, similar to having one).

While you are at it, you can probably do the same thing with genetics (stop Lysenkoism). If you have an actual winter, you'd better know your way around making cold-resistant crops.

Well, if de-politisation of science would not fly, you can pick some other research fields (process is kinda random anyway) for SU to outlaw and keep cybernetics afloat.

Purge party higher-ups

When average age of top party members is 70 - well, something went terribly wrong and people are being selected not for management capabilities but for stuff like personal familiarity and being convenient. This process should be disrupted - or maybe you could have "inner party" that actually decides what happens and is not slipping into senility. Either way, thouroughly centralised system without proper control from the center is bound to go haywire, so your party better know what they are doing and actually do stuff.

Answer 10

Refortify the multi-national conception of the USSR.

Think about the name of the country and the aspiration it was intended to convey: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost were reasonably well thought out concepts about how to begin reforming and modernizing the economy, but his highly technocratic worldview didn't account for the natural human desire to feel included. His Politburo was apparently the most ethnically Russian in all of Soviet history. This indicates that talented people in the other Republics weren't getting as many opportunities to build career stakes with the central government.

Keep in mind that the Romans had been relatively good at recruiting talent into their leadership circles from all regions of their empire as it expanded.

Gorbachev wasn't outwardly nativist, but we see a lot of that among Putin's inner circle... and attitude that's exacerbated tensions with the former Republics

Answer 11

There are several factors that caused the Soviet Union to collapse. For now, I can only write about two. Preventing either one of them may have allowed the USSR to survive into today.

1. Soviet Paranoia

Some will say that this is cultural (I do not care to categorize it), but it is probably the most significant factor explaining why the Soviet Union collapsed. There was a great deal of internal paranoia--ie, a fear stemming from Kremlin members, high officials, intelligence personnel, or military figures just ending up missing or disappearing. This was so controversial, that there was a method of detecting whether or not an official was still around, and it involved ballet performances: If someone was supposed to watch the ballet but was not photographed at the event, it was generally assumed that they were silently executed.

But this problem extended beyond internal paranoia, one of the biggest mistakes the Soviets made before their fall was a propaganda campaign to discredit the leadership of a communist faction in Afghanistan. That faction was known as the "Khalqists" and was headed by Hafizullah Amin--and unlike the other communists, they advocated immediate reforms to take the whole of Afghanistan from a traditional society into a secular, even atheist, and communist one. However, those reforms were met by a backlash from the conservative/traditional segments of Afghan society, which caused chaos. In order to distance themselves, the Soviets unleashed a propaganda campaign to discredit the Khalqists and frame Amin as a secret CIA agent, bent on sabotaging communism in Kabul. The aim was to convince the Afghans that the Khalqists were not true communists, so that other, more moderate communist factions can appear more palatable to all segments of Afghan society.

The problem? The Soviets began to believe their own lies. Amin was treated as a CIA agent by the Soviet press, and numerous Soviet attempts to assassinate him failed. So, an opinion that "someone" must be helping Amin began to formulate--naturally, it was assumed to be the Americans. Moreover, the Khalqists, fearing that their time had come, began to make all sorts of political mistakes, overreacting to protests and committing crimes that began to alienate even the left-wing segments of Afghan society. The Soviets felt they had to act fast to preserve communism in Kabul--or else, a government favorable to Washington might be created in Afghanistan. The result? The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in panic, unprepared and without a clear objective.

Today, in many political science classes, this scenario is studied to show the problems of "blowback"--which occurs when actors inject statements that may be false in order to discredit opponents or alter the opinion of certain populations. Sometimes, those statements come back seeming more real than their author(s) ever intended, and that can cause great panic--even amongst well-calculated Soviet intelligence agents. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is considered by many to be its downfall, or at least, the beginning of its downfall.

Still want the USSR around? Build a time machine, tell them Amin was probably just politically stupid, convince them not to panic and invade Afghanistan, and that if they do invade Afghanistan on the day that they ultimately did, that Zbignew Brzezinski predicted it at least a week ago--and that the CIA is hellbent on getting revenge for what the Soviets did in Vietnam.

2. The Cold War and American Covert Action

Nowadays, no one denies the lengthy covert war between Washington and Moscow. During the Korean War, Russian pilots flew in Korean-marked jets, and even though the Soviets were not one of the primary belligerents in that war, the top ace fighter pilot was a Russian. Later, the Soviets aided the Vietcong during the Vietnam war. This was supposed to be secret, because when interviewed their officials would say, "What? I have no idea what you're talking about."--plausible deniability.

But Washington also had a hand in clandestine activities against Moscow. The biggest and most famous one was Afghanistan, however, the real success of American influence was not only arming and training organizations to fight the Soviets, it was to convince numerous populations that the Soviets were "evil, Godless commies", while at the same time, the U.S. had a program to show American movies to foreign audiences, and Disneyland was so big, that imprisoned Eastern European dissidents occupied by the USSR or under communist rule, would look outside their jail-cell windows and say "Disneyland"--associating Disneyland with freedom.

As a result, many countries that were supposed to be behind the "iron curtain", were actually behind a very fragile glass wall--with resistance fighters within them (or at least political movements) that opposed the USSR. So, while the U.S. could count on the other four members of the "Five Eyes"--United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and often even count on other NATO countries, the USSR had a dwindling number of allies--even outright communist countries, like China and Tito's Yugoslavia, at times during the Cold War, were on the side of Washington.

Furthermore, the Arabian Peninsula and Saudi Arabia were squarely in the hands of American and British oil companies, and up until 1979, even Iran was an American ally and used to contain the USSR, which effectively meant the entire oil of the Middle East was in the hands of Washington and NATO.

Political scientists call this "balancing"--Washington did it much better than the Soviets, arguably because the U.S. was in a much better position after WW2 than the USSR, and so could offer more to its allies, but also because American covert action was based in compellence to force certain outcomes: Latin American countries have socialistic leaders like Allende in Chile, who may favor Moscow? Devastate their economy, rouse their public, then overthrow the regime in favor of a dictator who is more favorable to Washington--like Pinochet. As a result, governments across the world, but especially in Latin America and the Middle East, were under unshakable political instability (economic sabotage, regime change, civil war, etc) because of these covert action operations.

Still want the Soviet Union around? Use that same time machine to tell them to preserve their spheres of influence, so that they do not fall like a column of dominoes. That way, at a minimum, the USSR can avoid being contained (and more or less isolated) from the rest of the world.

Also, tell them that American realists and pragmatists do not see the Cold War as solely a war of ideology, but a war based in geopolitics. Sure enough, the Soviets were not all idealists either, which meant the fact that the U.S. and the USSR were the two most powerful countries, is sufficient for some of their countrymen to be distrustful of the other--or at the very least, very cautious of the other, and for some, like George Kennan, that is enough reason to want to put pressure on the other. Kennan's containment policies combined with the Marshall Plan and covert action worked to turn the world in America's favor.

Answer 12

Prevent the "accident" ("disaster" is a better fit) at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It alone pretty much bankrupted the Soviet Union. The accident also cost the Soviet Union lots of prestige abroad... including in East Block... some even at home, although they were able to downplay it.

No Gorbachov - replace him with hard-liner. Ideally, a "young" hardliner... could even follow Brezhnev in 1982; to prevent the less than ideal situation with four different leaders in less than five years! Alternatively, let the coup against Gorbachov in 1991 succeed - and perhaps arrest/kill/marginalize Boris Yeltsin (long?) before or in the beginning of the coup (much of Yeltsin's power came from his roles as leader in Moscow and "President of Russia" (while it was part of the Soviet Union) - this could've been stopped).

Stop Lech Wałęsa - and the Solidarity Union - in Poland.

Be firmer in East Berlin - prevent The Berlin Wall from falling. Be firmer in East Germany - support STASI, prevent more escapees.

Prevent Ronald Reagan (or George Bush Sr.) from becoming President of the USA - or take him/them out in some way (remember Hinckley nearly succeeded - and he just wanted to impress Jodi Foster!). Ideally let Jimmy Carter have a second term, but few could've been worse to the Soviet Union than Reagan.

Answer 13

During the 80s, the Soviet Union attempted to match defense spending with the United States. Since their economy was only a quarter the size of the United States' economy by GDP, this required them to dedicate four times as much of their economy to the military. The US was allocating roughly 6% of their GDP to the military. The Soviet Union was around 25%.

If the Soviet Union had instead spent 5% of GDP on the military, this still would have been high by modern standards. The US is currently one of the higher spenders at 4.5% in 2015. That would have left 20% of GDP to use on civic improvements, research, and other expenses to improve the economy. By not matching the Reagan buildup, the Soviet Union might have been fiscally sound.

Note that this would have required abandoning the communists in Afghanistan. Ideally you'd avoid the 1979 invasion and start the military drawdown then instead.

Lower defense spending would also have made it easier to sign treaties with other countries. What if the Soviet Union had been trading with western Europe in the 80s?

Lower defense spending might also have prevented Chernobyl. There is some speculation that the Chernobyl reactor accident was caused by defense testing. Of course, I can't confirm that. It's speculation. But it is plausible enough for story purposes.

I suppose the counter-claim would be that the Soviet Union needed that military spending to stay together. I don't know enough to debunk or confirm that. I suspect that eastern Europe might have broken off in that scenario. Also, presumably they'd spend less on foreign aid to countries like Cuba as well.

Answer 14

Many answers here suggest that economics is the primary factor: specifically the lack of a liberal economic model, but this fails to explain the fate of other regimes. I suggest we take a step back and try and understand how the world works outside of liberal democracies; as it seems that many are answering through the bias of their own cultural expectations rather than the historical realities. I dare say it's convenient that we in the west take such an essentialist view that, of course, those societies which are not like us must fail because they are not like us.

If the answer is that the USSR failed economically, why did it not collapse with Stalin's woeful famine-causing mismanagement? Why did China's regime not fail under Mao's similar incompetence? Why are impoverished North Korea and hyperinflation ridden Zimbabwe still around? They began life as socialist states and yet are amongst the most hopelessly corrupt and poor in the world. If economics was the be all and end all they all would have collapsed long ago.

The real issue is the enforcement (or loss) of authority. Gorbachev's Glasnost reforms were the long term consequence, effectively, of de-Stalinisation. The USSR under Stalin is more similar to contemporary North Korea; in which the personality cult of the dear leader, and his control over society, is absolute. Non conformity is not tolerated. Stalin was responsible for atrocities, from the Katyn massacre in Poland to the Holodomor in Ukraine and the mass murder and imprisonment of just about anyone who was intelligent or stupid enough to say something questionable. This is similar to Mao's Cultural Revolution, or to a lesser extent Khmer Rouge's genocide (and that was stopped only by an invading Vietnamese army).

Simply make sure de-Stalinisation never happens. The leaders of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death were just as brutal. Stalin's 1924 Socialism in One Country proposal is adopted wholesale, in so far as it allows leaders to compartmentalise each Soviet/Warsaw republic to ensure greater control over institutions and considerably less flow of information and people between places.

Incidentally, I've read a few books written under the pseudonym Viktor Suvorov, by a Soviet army intelligence officer who defected in the 70s. He said that the only people who knew a proper comparison between west and east were his peers, and consequently they never understood why any westerners would be sympathetic to the USSR. Importantly, he argued that prior to his leaving the entire Soviet economy was designed to supply the Red Army, nothing else was a priority (in this case traditional liberal economic concerns are irrelevant), and Soviet industry was fed technology by the USSR's spies who stole practically everything they could from the west. This meant that the USSR's military capability leeched off western military capability. Innovation wasn't necessary, just repurposing.

So if the strategy is to make the economy serve the military, whether it makes the people wealthier or not is irrelevant. And how would they know any better with a press in perpetual Stalinism? Because we're all free comrades here who have better living standards than anywhere. Wink wink. Industry's purpose is to support state organs responsible for enforcing control. It doesn't need to do better than anyone else, simply provide a minimum output.

Unfortunately this means the USSR won't be able to remain a super power longer term, but then it can't anyway because America has the technology lead by having free speech and thus free exchange of information. More information shared, more new ideas, more research. This however isn't to say that the USSR will be an irrelevance... I mean, we're talking about something like a giant North Korea. If the USSR remained Stalinist nuclear disarmaments with the USA would never have happened. They would be swimming with nuclear weapons and even if their traditional army is a step behind, or becomes completely irrelevant, they still have the power to bring on a nuclear apocalypse on a whim. Not insignificant.

The Soviet Union can't have free exchange of ideas and survive. You're going to have to pick one. That is precisely why they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, even though it was late in the year and they needed to deploy the army to help collect the harvest (thus risked famine) - the free press is more dangerous to the USSR than famine. So they put down "Socialism with a Human face" with tanks. When Gorbachev was asked what was the difference between Glasnost and then, he said "Nineteen years". That is the problem.

Answer 15

I do believe that the Red Alert series has your answer, although it's pretty intentionally outlandish.

Tl;Dr: Kill Hitler AND Einstein.

(I would have put this in a comment, but my rep isn't high enough.)

Answer 16

No Gorbachev or Perestroika, that's it. If you want details, you even can keep Gorbachev but get rid of Yakovlev, and, desirably, Suslov.

Answer 17

I would have the US invade Iran at the time USSR were in Afghanistan.

That could have shifted the military attention in the region towards the US and the soviets could have supplied the iranian freedom fighters with weapons in exchange for help against the Mujahedin (cutting off supply routes).

The effect would be higher oil prices to bolster the soviet exports, the losses of men and equipment in Afghanistan would be far lower.

When the US eventually had to give up their presence in Iran a soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan could be part of a peace deal for the region.

This would leave the Soviet Union a far stronger military power with a far better economy than was the result after the withdrawal from Afghanistan in real life.

If the middle-east oil production was set back as well the soviet economy could be booming for a decade.

And the US might withdraw itself into isolationism.

Answer 18

Make Churchill it's a good idea to implement parts of Operation Unthinkable. (USA don't want to take part of this but can't stop this from happining). Possible end results: ALL of Europe is under Soviet occupation. USSR was not involved in helping to destroy Japan army in China and started covert trade with Japan instead. Japan have their own Manhattan project and now has time to finish it and actually use several bombs. America responds in kind. Japan responds with biowarfare. Nuclear attacks by USA don't have too much effect on japonese morale so USA must actually invade and take heavy losses both in body count and in time. USSR gets nuclear weapons faster because Japan is willing to help (for a price).

Churchill is killed in the end. (Wikipedia of this timeline says he was killed by fanatic and it's conspiracy theory to think that there was any involvement from $country_name secret services).

Answer 19

John Hinckley Jr's 1981 attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan succeeds

In my opinion, the actions of Ronald Reagan during his presidency can't be understated in bringing about the end of the Soviet Union. Prior to his election, the policy between the two superpowers was one of peaceful coexistence, Reagan was the figurehead of a conservative movement that saw the presence of the USSR as an intolerable evil.

So, in the seconds after Hinckley's bullets fatally wound President Reagan, a sharp-shooting secret serviceman fires a killing shot straight into Hinckley's head. With the assassin dead, his bizarre motivations (wanting to impress the actress Jodie Foster) never come to light. America is in shock, and people are speculating wildly about the motives of the assassin, was he a communist, an Islamist, a neo-nazi? Regardless, the consensus in Washington is that something needs to be done about gun control.

Comprehensive reform of gun law is passed, and with it, the conservative movement that Reagan figureheaded is sidelined. The "Evil Empire" speech never happens and the policy of peaceful coexistence is maintained. The 80s in this timeline are much less "80s-y", the "big bang" of financial de-regulation is less radical and the economic malaise of the 70s persists for longer.

Crucially, the arms race between the two blocs is less extreme, and the USSR is able to invest less in its military, and more in modernising technology and consumer goods. By the present day, it's hardly a socialist utopia, but it successfully manages to plod along.

Answer 20

Gorbachev respects the will of the people of the USSR as expressed in the March 1991 referendum when 76.4% of them voted to retain the USSR.

Alternatively, August 1991 Coup against Gorbachev succeeds thereby preventing Gorbachev from proceeding with the dissolution.

Answer 21

Prevent the Great Purge of 1936-1938

This single event absolutely gutted the Soviet Union. It removed great leaders, thinkers and builders. It cowed those who remained into underperforming and being silent, so as not to be noticed.

It set back science and culture and infrastructure by 20 years. At least.

With better leaders, with an agriculture that functioned, the Soviet Union would have much better resisted Germany's offensive.
This, in turn, would have led to a much lesser degree of military and political radicalization of the USSR.
Quite likely, the entire cold war with the US would not have happened. Instead, there would have been fierce competition to show whose country and whose ideology was better, but in economic and cultural and technological "battlegrounds", instead of the purely military mode of the cold war.

In simple, the USSR would have been a functional country instead of the huge military camp it became.

So how does one prevent the Great Purge? Just get Stalin a friend. A confidant, someone who he likes, but also trusts. And who is an intellectual. Just that slight nudge to turn Stalin's paranoia away from his own country's achievers, and towards actually achieving progress.
Maybe someone that saved him from being run over and crippled at age 12? NA, too early, that would prevent his political career.
Maybe a friend from the illicit book club at the seminary? This would provide a person with aligned political views, yet of an intellectual background, that could accompany him further in his career? Just a small influence, to turn Stalin's energy away from fear of the other achievers in the Soviet Union.

Answer 22

The Soviets could have stopped their deep well drilling plans and instead gotten a head start on drilling for oil and gas sooner. They are like 50 years behind. More oil money would have meant more power and economic ability to stay alive.

As with China, the ability to convert domestic resources to Dollars and UK Pounds means prosperity. And the economics would have softened the commie stance to a lot of degree (like in China).

But the Venezuela model needs to be considered. Don't just be rich in oil.

The other consideration would be to keep Stalin from killing all of their scientists. Talk about stupid on that. The scaremongering was too intense for too long.

Answer 23

My short answer would be: No drastic purges of the education or scientific communities. Pick one of the following: Nuclear weapon delivery systems, or the moon race, the USSR under its own self imposed restraints does not have the flexibility to go for both.

Keep your people at a reasonable level of happiness. Crack down on political corruption and be completely open about it. Nothing incites rebellion more than people being oppressed while their government even SEEMS to not care about corruption.

Answer 24

The eastern block was run on fear and paranoia. The Soviet union and all their protectorates were sentenced to fail from the start.

On the both sides of the Iron Fence it was a race where the strongest wins and weaker lose.

In the Western side strength was measued by net income and/or election results. This setup advantages the agile minds and inventors. To be succesfull, one had to grow faster.

In the Eastern side the strength was measured by ability to bump the opponent off. This system advantages spineless paranoids. To be succesfull, one need to eliminate opponents faster/more thoroughly.

---

How the Soviet Union could be saved from the doom?

The only way was that US and OECD failed first. If the project Apollo was fail and the whole Space Race would have lead to the economic disaster giving Soviets domination in near Space. If the Chernobyl disaster would happen in Three Mile Island and Chappelcross (Core meltdown and explosion) instead.

I think that in this scenario, the Soviet Union would take over whole world but its structure and system would lead, sooner or later, to decomposition and tough fight between different factions.

Answer 25

Multiple factors led to the collapse of the USSR and if you could prevent most of them, you could keep it afloat longer than in our timeline. You would have to prevent:

• Focus on alternative energy. Oil and natural gas were important to the USSR's command economy. The economy was damaged when then the value of oil went from 120 US Dollars a barrel in 1980 to 24 US Dollars a barrel in 1986. Have to USSR turn to some alternate energy sources like wind energy (which has been around since 1888 when Charles F. Brush invented the world's first automatically operated wind turbine), hydroelectricity (which would have been available at the time), and syngas (used during World War II to help power cars when gasoline was low). These alternative energy sources could help make the USSR less dependent on oil energy-wise and economy-wise since they could sell the energy to other socialist states. You don't need to get rid of oil, but make the USSR more independent from oil until the oil prices go back up in 1990.

• Reduce military spending, which took up 10% to 20% of the USSR's resources even when its economy was stagnant.

• Avoid the Chernobyl Power Plant disaster in April 26, 1986 with better trained technicians, more state of the art power plant than the one used in Chernobyl, or - as I described in point one - have a stronger move to alternative energy so people are less dependent on plants like Chernobyl.

• Don't go to Afghanistan! It is called the "Graveyard of Empires" for a reason. Stay away, or just send a very small force to scare America into mobilizing and getting themselves trapped there instead of your own forces.

• Reduce Gorbachev's reforms and don't have him dissolve the USSR. 76.4% of the people in 1991, even after being exposed to Western markets in a limited degree, wanted to retain the USSR with some reforms according to a Union-wide referendum. There should be fewer reforms and with the help of these steps, people should feel less of a need to reform, at least so rapidly.

• Oleg Guimaoutdinov was a USSR computer scientist who had the idea for a Soviet internet to supercharge the state's socialist command economy. He made a detailed proposal in 1970, but Communist Party leaders went against the idea. They allowed his ally Viktor Glushkov to create a small network called OGAS that began in 1962, but it was cut in 1970. In your timeline, get the leaders to agree to this project. This could reduce inefficiencies and quickly tell people how many resources needed to be sent to different locations using technology. It could help exchange important data under the watchful eye of the state. It could also be somewhat available to civilians, which would help make Marxist socialism and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat defined in Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program look more appealing technology-wise than capitalism. After all, the first global civilian internet network would be created by Soviet socialists, not by the capitalist west. The USSR would also go down in history as inventing the internet if this system was created from expanding the pre-existing OGAS system.

Answer 26

Continue the Space Race using nuclear propulsion and establish lunar colony as exclusive economic zone.

If USSR is able to build and sustain lunar colony, attracting the best and brightest people there (instead of DARPA-funded projects) and give them more autonomy than the system back on the earth allows, perhaps it could allow USSR to maintain technological lead and national cohesion. It would require Stalin to be deposed in favor of competent technocratic manager, perhaps Kurchatov?

Answer 27

At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, someone talks five representatives of the General Jewish Labour Bund from walking out of the proceedings. As a result, the faction commanded by Lenin, after losing a vote on certain membership issues, comes to be known as the Mensheviks - the minority. Over time, less authoritarian elements (called the Bolsheviks), by virtue of being thought of as the Majority, gain a slow but steady edge in shaping public opinion. Eventually they create a Soviet Union that is characterized by its decentralization and respect for the local councils ("soviets") that make decisions in accord with popular consensus and a respect for human rights. (This movement later inspires the German patriots who handily put down the machinations of disaffected elements working under the direction of an army infiltrator called Adolf something-or-other)

Answer 28

Protests that are relentless and involve most of the populous take away the leaders power, instead a functional more decentralized government is established where none has a huge amount of power. Also make the system more functional and dependent on the needs of the people by measuring demand and adjusting production with a formula to maximize happiness. No surveillance, the state becomes transparent and open for anyone to participate and look at. Corruption is severely punished and prosecuted by temporary task forces formed from random normal citizens, similar to jury duty in America, this creates an incorruptible instance that controls the government at every level.